Suspected assassin on cycle is said to have put bomb on car.

Updated 10:18 pm, Wednesday, January 11, 2012

People gather around a car — its driver and passenger, a nuclear scientist, killed — as it is removed in Tehran. Iran blames “the Zionists,” but the U.S. and Israel each denies responsibility.

People gather around a car — its driver and passenger, a nuclear scientist, killed — as it is removed in Tehran. Iran blames “the Zionists,” but the U.S. and Israel each denies responsibility.

Photo: MEGHDAD MADADI, AP, FARS NEWS AGENCY

Iran reports the killing of nuclear scientist

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LONDON — A bomber on a motorcycle killed a scientist from Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment site and his bodyguard-driver Wednesday during the morning commute in Tehran, Iranian media reported.

The assassination could further elevate international tensions over the Iranian nuclear program and stoke the country's growing anti-Western belligerence.

It was the fourth such attack reported in two years and, as after the previous episodes, Iran accused the United States and Israel of responsibility. The White House condemned the attack and denied any responsibility. The official reaction in Israel appeared to be more cryptic.

Iranian news accounts said the suspected assassin had attached a magnetized explosive device to the scientist's car and escaped during the rush hour in northern Tehran. News photographs from the scene showed a car, a Peugeot 405, draped in a pale blue tarp being lifted onto a truck. Some photographs published by Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency showed what it said was the body of the scientist still inside the car. The head was covered with a white cloth.

The scientist was identified as Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, 32, a professor at a technical university in Tehran, and a department supervisor at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant — one of two known sites where Western leaders suspect Iranian scientists are advancing toward the creation of a nuclear weapon.

The Mehr news agency said the explosion took place on Gol Nabi Street, on the scientist's route to work, at 8:20 a.m. The news agency said he was employed at the Natanz site as the director of commercial affairs.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran expresses its deep concern over, and lodges it strong condemnation of, such cruel, inhumane and criminal acts of terrorism against the Iranian scientists,” Iran's U.N. ambassador, Mohammad Khazaee, wrote in a letter sent to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other U.N. officials.

The semiofficial Fars news agency said the Wednesday bombing resembled the methods used in attacks in November 2010 against two other nuclear specialists.

Iran blamed Israel and the United States for the attack.

“The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists and is the work of the Zionists,” Fars quoted Tehran's deputy governor, Safar Ali Baratlou, as saying.

In Washington, Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, said in reaction to the attack: “The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this. We strongly condemn all acts of violence, including acts of violence like what is being reported today.”

In Israel, which regards Iran as its most significant security threat, the denial was much more vague.

Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the Israeli military spokesman, wrote on his Facebook page that “I don't know who took revenge on the Iranian scientist, but I am definitely not shedding a tear,” Agence France-Presse reported.